"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

The functions of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.

There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." -- Thomas Jefferson

Bidgear ad

 

I wish we had better news. Governments around the world remain close to passing and enacting laws to drastically curtail the freedom of citizens to express their minds. And in the US, corporate advertisers, including Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, are punishing Twitter owner Elon Musk for protecting freedom of speech at Twitter.

We are fighting back. From June 22 - 23 in London, Matt Taibbi, Russell Brand, and free speech defenders from around the world will gather in London to launch a new free speech movement.

To be sure, our opponents are strong and united, while we are weak and divided. We have never met the free speech defenders we are meeting around the world. We only know each other through video, emails, and messages. We have never before solicited donations for free speech advocacy and have little money to pay for travel and accommodations for the people flying into London.

But we have something our opponents don’t, which is the love of freedom and a passion to protect and expand it. While the forces of self-censorship and censorship are powerful, large majorities of citizens everywhere in the world want the right to express their views freely and without risk of being censored or otherwise punished.

Tags: COMPUTERS/INTERNET, CORPORATE MEDIA, COVER-UP/ DECEPTIONS/ PROPAGANDA, DICTATORSHIP, POLITICS/ ELECTIONS/ CORRUPTION
Posted on: Jun 04 06:34

According to Dimon’s version of events, he lived a cloistered existence in a corner office on the 48th floor of 270 Park Avenue where even the executives who directly reported to him and worked only “a couple hundred feet” away from his office, never shared with Dimon the bank’s many years of internal investigations about Epstein’s massive cash withdrawals from his accounts at the bank, that sometimes averaged more than $20,000 to $40,000 a month, or its investigations of Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage girls. According to the lawsuits, Epstein had accounts at the bank from 1998 to 2013, at times amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to Dimon, even the former Director of the Division of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Stephen Cutler, who became General Counsel at JPMorgan Chase in February of 2007, worked in the office next door to Dimon and reported to Dimon, didn’t share his numerous objections with Dimon to keeping the Epstein accounts at the bank.

An email was introduced by opposing counsel during the deposition, showing that as far back as 2011, Cutler had written in an email referring to Epstein that “This is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client.” According to the deposition transcript, it was two executives who worked on the 48th floor with Dimon, Jes Staley and Mary Erdoes, who decided to retain Epstein as a client after his Florida indictment, arrest, jail term and after multiple internal investigations of his large cash withdrawals from his JPMorgan Chase accounts.

 

Tags: POLITICS/ ELECTIONS/ CORRUPTION
Posted on: Jun 04 06:32

Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer for the (ab-)use of a family of computerized pattern recognition methods.

Well structured and labeled data is used to train the models to later have them recognize 'things' in unstructured data. Once the 'things' are found some additional algorithm can act on them.

I programmed some of these as backpropagation networks. They would, for example, 'learn' to 'read' pictures  of the numbers 0 to 9 and to present the correct numerical output. To push the 'learning' into the right direction during the serial iterations that train the network one needs a reward function or reward equation. It tells the network if the results of an iteration are 'right' or 'wrong'. For 'reading' visual representations of numbers that is quite simple. One sets up a table with the visual representations and manually adds the numerical value one sees. After the algo has finished its guess a lookup in the table will tell if it were right or wrong. A 'reward' is given when the result was correct. The model will reiterate and 'learn' from there.

Once trained on numbers written in Courier typography the model is likely to also recognize numbers written upside down in Times New Roman even though they look different.

The reward function for reading 0 to 9 is simple. But the formulation of a reward function quickly evolves into a huge problem when one works, as I did, on multi-dimensional (simulated) real world management problems. The one described by the airforce colonel above is a good example for the potential mistakes. Presented with a huge amount of real world data and a reward function that is somewhat wrong or too limited a machine learning algorithm may later come up with results that are unforeseen, impossible to execute or prohibited.

Tags: COMPUTERS/INTERNET
Posted on: Jun 04 06:31

More than $1.3 billion U.S. tax dollars were sent to Russia and China over the past five years (since 2017), according to a new analysis released today by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and OpenTheBooks.com auditors. This amount likely doesn’t reflect the total amount because federal agencies do not follow the trail of tax dollars to their final destination.

Senator Ernst and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) are leading the charge to create transparency and accountability for the taxpayer dollars that are being handed out in China and Russia. Today, they are introducing the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act that would require every penny from a government grant paid to any organization in China and Russia to be tracked and publicly disclosed.

Senator Ernst and OpenTheBooks determined more than $490 million from U.S. grants and contracts were paid to organizations in China over the past five years and another $870 million were paid to entities in Russia.

"Holding firms responsible to publicly report where and how they use their grants and contract awards can deputize private citizens and make them part of the solution. Radical transparency is revolutionizing U.S. public policy and is the information machine for democracy. Everyone has a stake in a more transparent, effective government."

Some of these projects in Russia and China funded by taxpayer dollars already tracked down include:

Tags: CHINA, ECONOMY, POLITICS/ ELECTIONS/ CORRUPTION, RUSSIA/ UKRAINE /BELARUS /CRIMEA
Posted on: Jun 04 06:28

An Australian and Swedish investigation has found that among the hundreds of COVID-19 research papers that have been withdrawn, a retracted study linking the drug hydroxychloroquine to increased mortality was the most cited paper.

With 1,360 citations at the time of data extraction, researchers in the field were still referring to the paper “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” long after it was retracted.

Authors of the analysis involving the University of Wollongong, Linköping University, and Western Sydney Local Health District wrote (pdf) that “most researchers who cite retracted research do not identify that the paper is retracted, even when submitting long after the paper has been withdrawn.”

Tags: CONSUMER RIGHTS / PRODUCT REPORTS, COVER-UP/ DECEPTIONS/ PROPAGANDA, POLITICS/ ELECTIONS/ CORRUPTION, SCIENCE/ HEALTH/ CLIMATE/ NATURE
Posted on: Jun 04 06:27

The war from across the border has impacted citizens in the Belgorod region of Russia to the point that many towns and villages have been evacuated, with some looking like ghost towns--this after armed groups mounted multiple raids since the war's start--as well as increased shelling and rocket fire. Just two days ago the anti-Moscow "Russian Volunteer Corps" said they launched another attack out of Ukraine, after a bigger one nearly two weeks ago left multiple casualties and many saboteurs killed. 

The New York Times wrote on Saturday that "Shebekino, a town of 40,000 six miles from the border, has effectively become a new part of the front line as Ukraine has intensified attacks inside Russia, including on residential areas near its own borders." This is all upending the lives of residents in the border region, akin to what already happened long ago on the Ukrainian side of the border. "The spate of assaults, most recently by militia groups aligned against Moscow, has sparked the largest military evacuation effort in Russia in decades," the report underscored. The past days have witnessed area residents move into temporary shelters, including the large Belgorod arena in the oblast capital.

Tags: RUSSIA/ UKRAINE /BELARUS /CRIMEA, WAR/DRAFT/ VETERAN AFFAIRS
Posted on: Jun 04 06:26
By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 13:49

 The Bible has been pulled from the shelves of libraries in a school district in Utah after a parent claimed that it could be considered “pornographic.”

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 13:49

A year ago, the far left, George Soros-backed Chesa Boudin was successfully removed from office in a recall election.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:22

As a result, some people on the left are sincerely worried about Biden’s chances in 2024 and are even calling for a contested Democrat primary in 2024.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:22

A speech at the graduation ceremony for the law school at the City University of New York was filled with hatred for America and Israel.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:21

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton revealed FBI agents knocked on his door and served him with a federal grand jury subpoena.

Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:21

Joe Biden Friday evening attacked MAGA Republicans in Congress and told several lies in his first Oval Office address to the nation.

Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:20

 The Davis School District in Utah has removed the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible from the shelves of every school level in the district besides high school.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:02

Joe Biden Friday evening addressed the nation on the debt deal agreement passed by both chambers of Congress while seated in a chair in the Oval Office.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:01

The globalist movement is targeting food production in the West. And, of course, the crooked officials are glad to assist.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 12:00
Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood, California has become Ground Zero for the parents’ revolt against the takeover of public schools by the radical left LGBTQI+ cult that has caused immense psychological harm to children over the past decade in the guise of “woke” education. The protest is being led by members of the Armenian community.
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 11:59
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis put a deranged heckler in her place with an epic response after she called him a fascist for protecting children.
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 11:59

Writer and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson says he has in his possession evidence from a study showing that covid “booster” vaccines push the immune system over the edge, causing an almost total collapse of immune function.

In a series of tweets, Berenson wrote that based on the study’s findings, no more booster shots should go into any arms. (Related: Here’s more proof that covid injections cause AIDS.)

“Boosters need to be halted immediately. HALTED. IMMEDIATELY. Stack coming,” Berenson wrote, Stack referring to his Substack blog. “There’s a new paper. It’s bad. How bad? I’ve shown it to two physicians so far. One said he ‘had a seizure’ reading it. The other said something worse.”

The study comes from China, which is where many believe the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) originated. It shows that after the fourth injection – meaning the two primary jabs and two subsequent booster shots – a person’s immune system is pretty much shot.

Tags: CONSUMER RIGHTS / PRODUCT REPORTS, SCIENCE/ HEALTH/ CLIMATE/ NATURE
Posted on: Jun 03 11:57

Following the COVID-19 virus epidemic, extensive, coordinated international research has led to the rapid development of effective vaccines. Although vaccines are now considered the best way to achieve collective safety and control mortality, due to the critical situation, these vaccines have been issued the emergency use licenses and some of their potential subsequence side effects have been overlooked. At the same time, there are many reports of side effects after getting a COVID-19 vaccine. According to these reports, vaccination can have an adverse event, especially on nervous system. The most important and common complications are cerebrovascular disorders including cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, transient ischemic attack, intracerebral hemorrhage, ischemic stroke, and demyelinating disorders including transverse myelitis, first manifestation of MS, and neuromyelitis optica. These effects are often acute and transient, but they can be severe and even fatal in a few cases. Herein, we have provided a comprehensive review of documents reporting neurological side effects of COVID-19 vaccines in international databases from 2020 to 2022 and discussed neurological disorders possibly caused by vaccination.

Webmaster addition: Look at this diagram from the article.

Note specifically the potential brain damage. I wonder if this is why so many people seem to be going crazy these days?

Tags: CONSUMER RIGHTS / PRODUCT REPORTS, SCIENCE/ HEALTH/ CLIMATE/ NATURE
Posted on: Jun 03 11:51

Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake announced this week that her legal team had filed a notice of appeal, beginning the first steps toward challenging her defeat in a suit against Maricopa County and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Lake made the remarks to Real America's Voice host Ben Bergquam before her appearance at the "Defend America Rally" on Wednesday, saying "our attorneys just filed a notice for appeal because of what we've discovered with the system log files, which show that they did secretive testing on three different dates and we now have the video to back that up. And that was not available to us because Maricopa County, the people who committed the crime against the people, held that information from us."

Tags: POLITICS/ ELECTIONS/ CORRUPTION, VOTE FRAUD
Posted on: Jun 03 11:28

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday revealed a doctor DID NOT examine Joe Biden after he fell hard on his right hip on Thursday.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 10:41

Flying is becoming an increasingly unpleasant event thanks in large part to unruly and selfish passengers. And other travelers are getting sick of it.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 10:40

The unemployment rate rose 3.7% in May – much higher than the 3.5% estimate – according to a report released by the Labor Department on Friday.

By: orraz
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 10:40
CNN reported Friday the Biden Justice Department has informed former Vice President Mike Pence he will not be prosecuted for having classified documents at his Indiana home.
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 10:38
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sought out communist Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu for a handshake at the security summit in Singapore Friday. The two men spoke briefly, Shangu could be seen smiling as they shook hands.
Tags: CURRENT EVENTS
Posted on: Jun 03 10:37

Staff able to watch customers in the bathroom? Tick! Obviously shabby infosec? Tick! Training AI as an excuse for data retention? Tick!

Tags: COMPUTERS/INTERNET, CONSUMER RIGHTS / PRODUCT REPORTS
Posted on: Jun 03 10:28